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Faculty Blog

Best Practices Learned During the Covid-19 Pandemic

GameLab Director Steve Stringer shares how ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall shifted its team-based curriculum quickly, adapting to unprecedented challenges with success.

By: Steve Stringer 

When the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown hit in Spring 2020,  had to fully shift our teaching methodologies to online learning on an unexpected one-week notice—all while maintaining the essential requirement of no loss in learning outcomes. This was no small feat, especially with content deeply oriented in collaborative teamwork.

Amongst the many adjustments were changes to the way research and senior cohort students’ thesis projects proceeded as project deadlines loomed, as well as critical events that impact student success such as graduation and career fairs.

Perhaps our greatest challenge was adapting our classroom teaching techniques, especially in Team Game Production—which was roughly half-way through teaching junior cohort students how to develop their first major large-scale game… now unexpectedly by fully virtual means.

This particular point in our curriculum is always designed to be challenging. The game must be designed and shipped in an insanely short 16-week schedule, with students working together on a new team of 60 people for the first time. They must learn how to communicate and adapt rapidly in a large team environment, and come out of the process with ample shared experiential knowledge to set them up for a successful senior Capstone game run the following semester. The game is in service to those learning outcomes, so finishing with commercial release-quality is a rare, massive accomplishment. It's a unicorn. 

 

Well, these students are unicorn riders. 

 

That team went on to complete their project with such high quality that ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall published their arcade racing game, , on Steam in Summer 2020. This marked a major program milestone: the first time ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall has ever published a junior cohort game in its history. (Spoiler: we did it again in 2021 with .) 

 

Since then, ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall students finished and shipped 10 games during the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking at AAA games that have largely slipped their 2020-2022 release dates, you would be correct in assuming this is special. 

 

Here's how they did it.

 

Keeping Teammates Connected

 

Succeeding in a fully virtual environment requires technology for sure.  However, we quickly discovered that paying equal attention to the psychological wellness of the team was just as important as the technology. 

 

Hallmarks of the lockdown meant solving technical problems while simultaneously managing the stress, fear, and isolation that comes from lockdown. This depended on staying connected with your teams. 

• We quickly adapted to Zoom rooms dedicated to work groups. 
• We developed team norms requiring that everyone work in full camera view so Zoom’s gallery view was always populated. 
• Psychological safety was augmented by buddy systems, wellness checks, and a lot of listening. 

Everyone had a team—a family—to rely on. Having a unified purpose and a clarity of vision helped as well. They were all pulling together to accomplish a goal.

 

As the students later headed into pre-production on their subsequent Capstone games, the teams relied on shared work spaces and tools such as Google Docs and Miro where teammates could collaborate together in real-time. The presence of cursors and avatars as they were talking over Zoom meant they were working together—a subtle but impactful thing that helped keep teammates connected and reduced feelings of isolation.

 

Accountability & Team Norms Are Key

 

Anyone who has worked from home knows how difficult it is to stay focused and productive.  Without the eyes of teammates and managers on you, time management becomes fluid and lax. Keeping cameras on and being in full view at all times did much of the heavy lifting, but we also found that we had to adapt team norms to include accountability rituals that weren't required in-person. Each team adopted norms—such as default-on cameras, showing yourself fully in frame, and being present in gallery view—to keep teammates accountable without punishment or embarrassment, and which also continued a sense of continuity and community.

 

Making Modality Irrelevant

 

Because some team members were fully virtual for the entire production, and ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall maintained strict protocols with a bias toward staying home safe if anyone on the team was symptomatic, the team had to get creative on how to facilitate development and testing.

 

One best practice we discovered was taking advantage of large-screen TVs and Intel NUC mini-PCs. Coupled with special 360-degree cameras, conference room grade microphones, and high-fidelity webcams, teammates had visual telepresence in the room and could have a discussion with remote teammates as if they were together. This seamless integration made modality irrelevant, and importantly, kept remote students connected and engaged with their classmates. This was a lifeline for some, and a practical tool for all, which will surely become standard practice post-pandemic.

 

With teammates and testers spread nationwide, the team looked for ways to virtualize development without having to provision source control or lock down development environments. This is where Steam SDK came in. Through a special arrangement with Valve, we were able to set up teams virtually and distribute and test even though it wasn't a guarantee that we would publish the games through the platform. Steam deployment allowed the team to always have a playable version of the game for any teammate regardless of their location and also meant they could conduct user testing and research safely wherever the testers happened to be. This ended up being a massive production advantage as they were able to tap into hundreds of external testers thanks to a collaborative effort with ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½'s undergraduate eSports and GameDev clubs as well as ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall's extensive alumni network. As a result, the Fall 2020 Capstone game along with the other 2020-21 Capstone games, has had more eyes on it and has been enjoyed by more gamers than any Capstone game ever before.

 

Flipping the Ratio

 

As the pandemic dragged on, seasons changed as did our policies. Biases shifted back to in-person instruction and development, but we never did away with the overabundance of caution, which meant that on any given day, some portion of the team would be virtual. Fortunately, all of our investment in communication tech paid off here. We continued with gallery view and team practices that kept people connected to the room. It became second nature to see one or more heads on the TV working away with their teammates in the room. For those working from home, they saw a gallery view of their teammates and could ask questions, share work, and communicate with everyone as if they were sitting there next to everyone. It truly became a seamless experience.

 

Adapting SCRUM

 

One thing we adapted to quickly was the use of our eMeet teleconference speaker "pucks" as our SCRUM charms (you might know them as "totems" in original Agile parlance). So instead of passing around a sword or wearing the silly hat, the team would pass the speakerphone mic, announce their name, wave at the room camera, and give their SCRUM updates. Anyone remote would be able to hear everything clearly, and follow along with the room camera as if they were standing in that part of the room. 

 

Snowpocalypse '21: Stressing the Modalities, Again

 

As if the pandemic wasn't challenging enough, “Snowpocalypse” froze Texas and shut everything down… again. So while this presented logistical challenges, from a teamwork standpoint, we simply adapted instantly to an online modality. Unfortunately, the hallmark challenge of Snowpocalypse was the hours-long (sometimes even days-long) power outages, but for those able to work, they were able to meet using the same tools and best-practices we set up during the pandemic. The conclusion is that you don't need a worldwide pandemic to move to a mixed modality.

 

Pandemic Era Accomplishments

 

The same cohort of students went on to further their achievements, launching and shipping five senior Capstone games in Fall 2020.

 

Spring-Fall 2021 saw equal success. The next cohort followed in their footsteps to become the second in Guildhall history to launch a junior cohort game on Steam, with the aptly named . They then greenlit each of their three senior Capstone creations for Steam in Fall 2021, which are set to be published on the platform in Spring 2022.

 

The full list of ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall student games shipped during the pandemic is as follows: , , , , , — and coming soon to Steam, (and Kibbi Keeper VR), , and .

 

Shipping a single game is one of the most challenging endeavors a team can undertake. The students of ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ Guildhall managed to ship ten, each a massive accomplishment amidst formidable challenges.  Undoubtedly, they will take these experiences and best practices working adaptably under adversity out into the gaming industry and create the next round of hits.

 

Hard Shift: Adapting Quickly Amidst A Pandemic 

When the pandemic hit, we were roughly half-way through our "Middle TGP" course, in which our second semester students make an arcade racing game on a single, cohort-wide team. For those not familiar with our Team Game Production (TGP) curriculum, "Middle TGP" means the training wheels are still very much on. For the vast majority of our student developers, this is their first time working on a big team. All of our agile practices are still analog and in-person as we work through all the communication and fundamental development challenges you'd expect from working on one big team. This is to say, we transitioned from a world where every wall and whiteboard in Studio 134 and the Gamelab was filled with sticky notes and kanban boards to a completely virtual studio in a matter of days. This was no small feat, and the students did a truly amazing job of adapting.

We got official word that we were going to go virtual on a Friday. By the following Wednesday, our group of 6 very talented producers had converted the analog boards scrum boards to monday.com. Two days later, we were doing dry-runs of our daily scrums on Zoom and moving tasks on virtual boards. By the following Monday, we were meeting in Zoom's gallery view.

In those first few days, production expectedly slowed to a crawl as we tripped over communication issues. However, by applying agile on a daily retro scale, we quickly figured out what worked and what didn't rapidly.

What went right:

• Zoom and Slack: our first day back, we had a 60-person meeting (that remarkable moment is captured in the picture above). You would think it would be utter chaos, but it actually worked.
• Daily production retros, a global embrace of experimentation, and an open sharing of best practices led to incredibly agile improvement on a hourly basis. I can't say we were at 100% velocity, but we got up to speed within a week. The team was able to hit their 1st P/VS milestone today, and lost only 1 week to getting up to speed in virtual.
• A deep bench of support and a whatever-it-takes attitude by our technical team meant we could shift the entirety of ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½--not just Guildhall--to virtual within days. I can't thank our tech team enough for their support, flexibility, and patience.
• In TGP, we preach patience and grace: have patience and grace with each other as we make mistakes and continually improve. The students have exercised this philosophy more than I could have imagined. I can't think of a single time someone lost their cool or got mad since we went virtual. This is remarkable, considering the stress and chaos the pandemic caused.

What went wrong:

• For me, my co-faculty, and the project leadership team, situational awareness was completely cut off. We went from gathering a ton of signals from the room simply by listening and observing to seeing the project through a single straw. In the 'before' times, we could listen to multiple conversations, pick up on emotional flareups, and generally read body language around the room to maintain an innate understanding of how the team was doing. In a zoomed-out world, all of those signals are cut off. Over time, it improved, but was always a challenge.
• What was once implied and understood was now missed. In our first days working remotely, there were a lot of open-ended questions ("what do y'all think? ") that were met with crickets. People didn't realize you were talking to them. Misunderstandings abounded.
• Be wary of accidental Zoom meeting attendees. There's a middle school teacher out there somewhere that mistyped my personal Zoom link for their class in their syllabus. Several times, we had very confused kids pop into our meetings. It wasn't a problem and we just laughed, but eventually we assessed the need to password protect our Zoom meetings, which introduced some overhead. 

Learned best practices:

• Call and response: Our six producers had their sub-teams check in two or three times a day, depending. Each person Slacked what they're working on and sent a screenshot of their work. This kept folks accountable, and it also let those of us at the exec-level graze the information passively to keep up on what's going on.
• Assume nothing. Be explicit in your Zoom meetings. If you're talking to/or about someone, use their name. Over-use reflective listening to ensure you understood what people are saying. Also be explicit about action items: Who is responsible? Who is following up? What are the deliverables? How will we know it's done?
• Be super-, extra-, triple-explicit about your definitions of done. It is almost a given that two people will have a conversation in Zoom or Slack and be coming from two completely different sets of understanding without realizing it. Again, reflective listening and explicit coverage of action plans helps.
• It's a requirement that all cameras are on in Zoom meetings. This keeps people accountable and present. We also required they wear pants. Really. This helped maintain a sense of professionalism and literal hygiene on the team.
• Pin daily schedules in your team's Slack channel with embedded links. Giving everyone on the team an idea of the times and virtual places they needed to be in is critical.
• Get in the habit of providing links to Zoom meetings frequently and redundantly. In other words, don't make people dig. Instead of "meeting's starting, y'all" (we're in Texas), be explicit: "Team meeting now: https://smu.zoom.us/j/1234512356"
• Record and share everything. Relevant to not having situational awareness and not being able to attend multiple meetings at once, reviewing recorded meetings is the next best thing we found. Zoom's cloud recording feature is a godsend here.
• Check in often. This isn't on the team level (though we check in often there too). I'm talking about personal wellness checks for everyone. During the Pandemic it became imperative to feel that we were all in this together, during a scary time for many. The power of simply checking in and letting people vent went a long way in keeping overall morale up and staying positive as a team.
• Provide a way for teammates to commune and just "be" together. To facilitate this, we encouraged team members who weren't bouncing from meeting to meeting to host a Zoom meeting of their own where their coworkers could join. This approximates what it was like to work together at a table or in a workgroup. It's not perfect, but it provided a little bit of a psychological safety net, especially for those who were living alone.